Boulder woman, professional pool player makes waves

People say she looks like a snake ready to lunge when her large brown eyes flicker across the felt-top table. A mixture of intense focus, internal discipline and almost-otherworldly intuition.

"I can sense weakness," she says. "If I sense a weakness, you're in big trouble."

That's how she got her nickname: The Viper.

She enters 2010 ranked fifth in the United States and 17th in the world among professional women billiard players.

But at age 39, Boulder native Melissa Little says she's nowhere done striking. She dreams of earning Colorado a national championship title, and helping usher the sport into the Olympics.

"I'm knocking on the door. I'm right there," Little says. "It's just a matter of time. If my body can hold up, I promise Colorado a championship."

She also wants to guide more women -- and kids -- into the male-dominated sport, bringing it out of the stereotype of dim bars and smoky nightclubs and into living rooms, family venues and even classrooms. She sees the table as a geometry, calculus and physics puzzle.

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Her resume makes her goals seem plausible. Little secured three top-10 finishes with the Women's Professional Billiard Association last year. She has competed full-time on the Women's Professional Billiards Associations Classic Tour for the past 10 years, and represented the United States in four world championships.

The list goes on, and Little rattles swiftly through numbers. She delights in numbers. In fact, that's part of the secret behind her success.

Melissa Little, originally from Boulder, is one of the top female pool players in the country. Known as "The Viper," she practices at the Wynkoop Brewing Company in Denver.
For a video of Melissa playing, go to www.dailycamera.com.
Cliff Grassmick / January 8, 2010 (CLIFF GRASSMICK)

But before we divulge the tricks, let's step up to the table and look Boulder's Viper in the face.

The opening break shot

If you knew Little as a kid at Columbine Elementary, you probably remember the taste of her dust; she's always been a fiercely competitive tomboy, she says.

By sixth grade, she rocked the boys on the football field. She went from being chosen last to giving a new definition to "You throw like a girl." Soon, she was chosen first -- always for quarterback.

Little cracked her first pool ball at age 14. That's when she told her mom that she wanted to be a professional pool player and play on TV.

At age 17, Little began playing more regularly at a Broomfield restaurant, until she could beat the cooks and bartenders. She gave college a shot at the University of Colorado, while working on the Hill at the Sink, but she says she kept gravitating back toward the billiard room.

"My family was like, 'Please, God, go to school," she says.

She didn't listen. She started competing at age 24. Two years later, she finished third in the women's state championship.

"I was so determined, 'I'm never taking third again,'" she says.

The next year, she won the women's state championship. And again, and again. By 1999, she found herself undefeated in the Vegas amateur national champs. The following year, she represented the United States in the world championship. She went pro in 2000.

Little started late, but she rose the ranks quickly.

"When I saw 'Million Dollar Baby,' I cried. That was me," Little says. "When I was younger, I was the only female in the pool hall, and all these world-champion pool players, recognizing how much talent I had for being a girl, took me under their wing. And they made me into a world champion."

While Little grew as a player, the sport grew, too.

According to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, billiards ranked the 10th most popular sport or fitness activity in 2008. Among individual sports, billiards showed the second greatest growth in overall participation since 2000, only behind bowling.

The association reported Americans' purchases of billiard equipment rose between 1998 and 2004, reaching $263 million in wholesale sales.

A changing scene

When Little enrolled in the Sacramento, Calif., men's pro event in 2007, the other players didn't take her seriously, she says.

"How can you be afraid of a little girl?" she says, before laughing. "Famous last words."

Little finished fifth, making history as the highest ranked woman in the men's event. The next weekend, she played the men's Reno Open championship in Nevada and landed ninth place -- the highest ranked woman in the history of the 30-year event.

"I want to prove a woman can play as good as a man, if not better," she says. "When I tell people I play pool, they're amazed. It's a male-dominated sport. I stick out like a sore thumb."

The National Sporting Goods Association reported that about 60 percent of men had played pool at least once in 2007, whereas not quite 40 percent of women had. Still, women's pro billiards is now a regular and prominent fixture on ESPN, and top shooters earn millions of dollars a year.

The growing popularity of pool among women is why Little created a women's league, 15 Rack, which kicks off 2010's practices in February. The league uses a scoring system that Little created years ago to fine-tune her practices using statistics.

The scoring system is intense, adding up to a six-hour practice that goes through 45 racks of balls.

"We make it look easy, but in reality, it's very, very difficult," Little says. "In these days, you got to act like the world champion every single shot, because these girls out there don't play around. You'll get pummeled."

Little is helping organize the Women's Professional Billiards Association national championships in November at the Wynkoop Brewing Company in Denver, where she's the house pro.

She also teaches clinics, gives private lessons, organizes corporate parties and created a juniors program to teach youth. She works with high school math classes, organizes exhibitions around the country and sets up fundraisers, says her fiancé Mark Haddad, also a world-champion pool player.

"She plays from her heart," he says. "She gives a lot to the sport, not only as a player but as a teacher and representative for the game. She's really a giver when it comes to her life and her sport."

Play on, player

Pool is not just a game; it's a serious sport, Little says.

She has left tournaments with stress fractures in her feet and back problems. Three years ago, she needed reconstructive surgery on her shoulder. She knows another player who has needed 11 surgeries, all billiards related.

When Little first walks into a new venue, she stops. She sits for a moment to absorb the tiny details of the room: the carpet, the lights, the seating, the layout of the room. This prevents distractions or surprises later in the match.

A good player needs excellent mechanics and mental control, Little says.

"You have to live, breathe, everything pool every day," Little says.

She avoids eating right before a match, to keep the blood supply in her brain and not her stomach. At the events, she rests. ("Practice is supposed to be done at home," she says.)

For weeks leading up to an event, she practices diligently for as many as six hours a day.

Her fiancé calls her a methodical player with a unique work ethic. She also uses a secret system she learned from another Colorado pool legend, which helps her pinpoint positions to get to the next shot. Few players in the country know this system.

And this system is one piece of the game that Little is not going to share.

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